The social distancing recommended to contain COVID-19 is particularly difficult for people with aphasia. Isolation is not a friend of communication, and it can be frustrating to have your routine derailed, especially when it comes to lost speech therapy appointments.
While some therapists are offering remote, video appointments, other therapists aren’t able to make the jump online. At the same time, clients may also lack the necessary tools or internet connection for continuing speech therapy appointments from home.
Even if you are continuing with remote speech therapy, you may be looking for small, actionable activities you can do from home that will help you retain speech progress.
What Is One Aphasia Action?
We’ve compiled a list of things you can do to keep up your speech progress from home.
Every day — starting tomorrow — we’ll post one activity early in the morning and share a link to the post on Facebook and Twitter.
Try every activity, even if you only do it once. Keep doing the activities you like, repeating them the next day along with the new activity, and drop the ones that don’t work for you.
We hope that by the end of the first week, you’ll have an hour-long (or longer!) new habit that will help you retain the progress you’ve made on regaining speech after an aphasia diagnosis or maintaining speech after a primary progressive aphasia diagnosis.
What If I Miss the First Day?
This works best if you start on Day 1 and work at your own pace, even if you’re finding this project after it has started. After 30 days, either continue doing the activities you’ve enjoyed from your first 30 days, or start the cycle again with Day 1.
Or spread out the activities. For instance, do Day 1 on Monday, Day 2 on Wednesday, and Day 3 on Friday. While it’s best to go in order, it is not important to complete the activities in 30 days.
List of One Aphasia Actions
- Day 1: Chat Appointments
- Day 2: Library at Home
- Day 3: The Family List
- Day 4: Verb-a-Day
- Day 5: One-Minute Mystery
- Day 6: Creative Meals
- Day 7: Categories
- Day 8: Game Time
- Day 9: Storyteller
- Day 10: The Letter Game
- Day 11: Hangman
- Day 12: Breathe
- Day 13: Book Club for Two
- Day 14: Pictionary
- Day 15: Knock Knock
- Day 16: Walking Challenge
- Day 17: Listen and Read
- Day 18: Positive Thought
- Day 19: Mini Puzzles
- Day 20: Delicious Lists
- Day 21: Connect Inside and Outside
- Day 22: Great Personality
- Day 23: Go on a Trip
- Day 24: Television Club for Two
- Day 25: Picture Perfect Conversations
- Day 26: Talk to Yourself
- Day 27: Sing It!
- Day 28: Puzzle Time
- Day 29: It’s Puzzling
- Day 30: Doodle Stories
Looking for more activities? Here are 20 more One Aphasia Action activities from 2020’s Aphasia Awareness Month.
Gabby Giffords and Fabi Hirsch Kruse, Ph.D., SLP-CCC deliver 10 new activities for One Aphasia Action
This is not a special speech therapy program, nor should it be used in place of recommendations from your speech therapist. It is general advice of speech-rich activities that can supplement speech therapy work or help individuals to not lose progress while they are isolated at home. We cannot give individual recommendations.